‘TMNT’ Trailer: Is Michael Bay Aware That It Looks A Lot Like ‘Transformers’?
The TMNT trailer released yesterday gave us not only a glimpse of all four of the turtles in Michael Bay’s upcoming film, but it also revealed something the man in charge might not be aware he’s doing.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is looking a lot like Transformers, at least in the last trailer.
While it is known that the Transformers director loves his explosions and camera crawls over attractive women accentuating their figures, it looks like those are the only two things that didn’t get used everywhere in the trailer. The first explosion is actually just the base of a tower falling over, and the actual fireball is a good distance away from the camera.
The latest TMNT trailer does repeat the neon glow behind the words that Michael Bay’s Transformers trailers have become known for. We know he’s basically rebooting the Transformers films, but that doesn’t mean he has to recycle what we’ve already seen in a new (for him) franchise. Even the city lights seem to have that other-worldly brightness to them that every big action film seems to favor in their sweeping night shots. Not every major franchise movie has to have outrageous lighting, especially if the screenplay is interesting in any way.
Have you seen the newest TMNT trailer?? http://t.co/DwgyGnQ5ZK Spoiler: Donatello looks like a Ghostbuster. pic.twitter.com/6rgbX1kHhO
— TODD SPENCE (@Todd_Spence) May 1, 2014
Megan Fox is also back, showing about as much emotional range as we’ve ever seen. She seems to stick to one facial expression for an entire scene, and this trailer shows nothing different. Admittedly, her role of April O’Neil wasn’t exactly detailed in the original animated series, being the basic attractive damsel in distress in every episode. Michael Bay may be bringing back that cardboard cutout performance, perpetuating Fox’s unfortunate image of having zero acting talent.
The TMNT trailer also seems to show off the relatively unnecessary use of slow motion in order to add dramatic appeal to action shots, another trope taken straight from Transformers. To Bay’s credit, that same idea has been used in almost every critically slammed action movie in the last decade. That doesn’t mean he needs to keep doing it, since it’s only adding a few cheap seconds to the movie’s run time.
Even the sound editing in this trailer seems to repeat what we’re used to from Michael Bay’s Transformers, sounding like it’s cutting off, only to blast a second later. It doesn’t sound better: It makes us wonder if our sound system is working right.
Long-time fans will probably be annoyed by a part of the plot that appears to deviate from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles‘ storyline almost completely. It seems to imply that Shredder is April O’Neil’s father, as his business partner explains that the turtles weren’t created by accident. According to this film, they were made intentionally.
Aside from the protective shells, what advantage is there in creating mutant heroes from turtles? They’re slow and have next to no range of motion, so it makes no sense to do that intentionally.
The TMNT trailer also recycles that infamous scene that has practically achieved meme status at this point. The scene in question is the one where Michelangelo introduces himself to April and tells her it’s “just a mask,” removing the cloth around his head, and she faints.
Nearly everything in the trailer reeks of unoriginality, and seems to be recycled from Michael Bay’s Transformers trailers.
[Image Via Bing]
